CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, August 4, 2014

by William Hamilton, Ph.D.

Immigration and Geo-politics: Fraught with dangers

Immigration Made Simple: Polls show 80-percent of U.S. citizens want the border children returned to Central America and our southern border controlled. Legislation written by the Democrat-controlled Senate is long on amnesty and short on border control. Legislation passed last week by the Republican-controlled House is long on border control and short on amnesty. President Obama wants open borders and amnesty for all. Take your pick.

Noted intelligence analyst, Elizabeth Bancroft, writing in The Intelligencer: Joint Studies in U.S. Intelligence says, "...We are seeing...the infiltration of thousands of unwanted Latin American children mobbing the borders, being arrested, and then coddled by dizzy-headed, cost-ignorant U.S. do-gooders gushing on TV newsfeeds about precious youngsters in need. Youngsters who, in short order, will pull in the rest of their large, hyper-breeding, public-service swilling families..." Former Clinton political adviser, Dick Morris, reports that the vast majority of the illegal border-crossers are older female teenagers who will likely become pregnant and produce a tsunami of "anchor babies," each with instant U.S. citizenship.

Turning to Geo-politics: The events leading up to World War I remind us how nation-states can stumble into conflicts with world-shaking consequences. A panel of outside experts appointed by President Obama to conduct the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), just called on the president to dump a major section of the 2014 QDR because it is "a serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States." The panel said the force structures mandated by President Obama "are inadequate given the future strategic and operational environment."

Candidate Obama promised and President Obama is cutting our nuclear forces in half and has moth-balled our entire fleet of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Russias Vladimir Putin is increasing his nuclear forces and is conducting tests in violation of the INF Treaty to improve his fleet of cruise missiles. Obama sent Putin a "stern" note.

Putin and Germanys Angela Merkel are about to cut a deal to insure Germany abundant supplies of Russias natural gas in return for which Merkel will get the E.U. to legitimize Putins takeover of the Crimea which is home to the old Soviet nuclear submarine pens carved into solid rock and immune from attack by our nuclear forces. Putin now has absolute control over the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a proxy war in Syria in which the U.S. is arming elements of al-Qaeda (remember Benghazi?) posing as anti-Assad rebels. Putin is fighting to keep Syrian President Assad in power so Russia can maintain access to its Mediterranean naval bases at Tartus and Latakia.

Candidate Obama promised and President Obama has converted the U.S. from the worlds only superpower to just another member of the nuclear club. Putin and Obama seem like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. When Putin pushes his foot forward, Obama pulls his foot back. The danger is that Putin (Fred), like Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1914, will overplay his hand, thinking that Obama (Ginger) will continue to be as supine as were France and Great Britain in the days leading up to World War I. With our military about to be cut in half, we could be just one misstep away from World War III.

Nationally syndicated columnist, William Hamilton, is a laureate of the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame. He was educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the U.S Naval War College, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.